Blind Dates

Rating 3 out of 5

Tom has always been a hopeless romantic but now he's just hopeless. After the COVID lockdown made him a reclusive introvert it was time, according to his friends and sister, to get back out there. The group sets him up on ten blind dates with the goal of re-establishing his love life. Tom quickly comes to realize just how difficult the dating world is! The dates mostly all have disastrous results and Tom keeps encountering memories of an old flame. Tom soon finds that he must decide if he can date his way to happiness or if his true love has been under his nose all along?

The book starts out with the events that led up to the pandemic with Tom starting to realize he might not like his job anymore. He is also addressing that a close friend will be moving away soon. Most important, however, Tom's best friend Beth confesses her feelings for him and rather than acknowledge his own he shuts down! Fast forward to a year of lockdown and his friends have decided enough is enough! They set him up on a variety of dates that they think would be successful for him.

As each date happened I honestly wondered if his friends were just finding the most insane matches for him to encourage him to go after Beth. I mean literally all of the dates seemed incompatible pretty early on. And he had the one friend who kept telling him he should confess his feelings to her before it was too late. While the dates are terrible it seems that Tom finds a useful take away from each of them, which is nice. (Even if he did go viral for that one)

The book was rather cute and fun. It was a nice look at the importance of friendship and romance. I liked the premise of his friends setting up the dates and not telling him anything until hours before the dates! It really did seem to get him back out of his shell. I will say the end of the book had some revelations that I did see coming and a few that I really did not see coming. If you want a fun lighthearted read which examines change and moving on after the pandemic check out this book!